Individuals may experience reduced ranges of motion in the various joints of the body as a result of physical injury or other infirmity. The quality of life of those individuals is adversely impacted due to the accompanying loss of physical function. This is especially true when the involved joints impact the use of the person's hands, wrists, and/or forearms, since so many daily tasks involve using them. Thus, bringing back the lost mobility is often a key goal of the individual.
If medical care is sought for help achieving this goal, medical practitioners often design therapeutic exercises to help the person overcome their limitations. Specifically, the therapeutic exercises are designed to rehabilitate the person by increasing the flexibility, strength, and endurance of the affected area.
Once the individual gains familiarity with the therapeutic exercises in the clinical setting, he or she is often asked to complete them at home. The home-based regimen often includes completing a set of several different exercises, typically 1-3 times a day.
This home-based regimen plays an important role in gaining back the lost range of motion. And, it requires the person to make a commitment to invest the time and energy in these exercises to achieve success.
It is this investment of time and energy, along with an overarching drive to gain back the use of their hand, wrist, and/or forearm, which leads the individual to want to assess their own rehabilitative status and progress.
Therefore, there is a strong need for a tool for self-assessment, to help inform and motivate the individual as he or she regains his or her joint range of motion, and consequently, his or her quality of life. It would be of increased benefit to the individual if the device were multifunctional, suitable for motivation, stretching, and/or exercise. The device of the present invention accomplishes this objective.
In the prior art, the joint range of motion measurement devices are designed for use in the clinical setting by trained medical professionals. Examples include compass-type angle indicators or goniometers, pendulum or bubble inclinometers, magnetic compass needles and the like. Although these devices find uses in the clinical setting, they suffer from a number of disadvantages.
First, their usage relies on the knowledge, skill, and experience of a trained medical practitioner and is therefore not well suited for personal private use.
Therefore, there is a need for a device that is simple in design and operation that does not require medical training to use.
Second, their usage occurs in the clinical setting, and is therefore only available to the person at appointment times. Thus, the measurements taken with the prior art devices are of limited motivating value for the individual. Specifically, the individual loses out on more frequent measurements, and the motivation such ongoing measurement can provide.
Therefore, there is a need for a device patients can use at their convenience to detect changes in their range of motion. This will ensure they receive the motivating benefits that ongoing measurement provides.
Third, their usage occurs while the patient remains relaxed and he or she plays no active role in the measurement. Therefore, since the patient is only passively involved, and not actively involved, he or she is less likely to fully understand where he or she is in terms of his or her progress.
Therefore, there is a need for a device patients can use where they are actively engaged in the range of motion measurement process.
Fourth, many prior art devices are expensive, and outside of typical consumers' price range since they are geared for clinical use.
Therefore, there is a need for a device that is not expensive.
Other disadvantages of prior art range of motion measurement devices include:
a) The need to involve someone other than the patient in the testing since many devices require more than one hand for positioning, stabilization, and operation.
b) Certain prior art inclinometer devices (e.g., the universal inclinometer or the bi-level inclinometer) require the patient to grip the devices' base, where the base does not have a shape conducive to providing a comfortable, secure, or repeatable grip.
c) One prior art device known as the wrist inclinometer is only capable of measuring supination and pronation. This limits the user's ability for measurement to just the frontal plane of the body (where supination and pronation occur).
d) Many prior art devices for range of motion measurement (e.g., goniometers, universal inclinometers) have problems with reproducibility and require the location of bony landmarks for proper positioning on the patient.
e) Prior art devices exclusively display measurements using degree increments, which provides useful measurement information, but may lack information that is easily interpreted by a patient.
For these reasons, the prior art devices for measuring joint motion are not well suited for patient home use. That is, the considerable cost and complexity associated with prior art prohibits their use for most consumers. Accordingly, a need exists for a device and method that can empower an individual to evaluate his or her rehabilitative status by assessing his or her joint range of motion. Ideally, the needed device is simple in design and operation, not costly, portable, and multifunctional.
From the known devices for exercise and stretching, there are many different options available, such as rope systems, springs, coils, dumbbells, etc. While these devices find uses, they have the drawback of not providing the user with any feedback on how he or she is progressing. For example, when a dumbbell is used as weight resistance, it is simply held in the user's hand, as dead weight. It does not provide the user with any insight into the rehabilitative process as exercises are performed.
Therefore, there is a need for a device and method that patients can use for exercise and stretching, that engages the user and provides insight into the rehabilitative process by simultaneously providing a visual indication of range of motion as the movements are performed.
The inventor of this device successfully used a self-built prototype during her recovery from a broken wrist.